Jaume Cabré - Winter Journey

When he had finished, the master was downcast and visibly fatigued, but with his attention fixed on the realization of his son's dream. His blind eyes lit up and he looked towards the bellows.

"Can you keep a secret, Kaspar?"

"Yes, master."

"Bring the pen and paper."

The boy obeyed rapidly.

Pointing to him as if he could see him: "Write down the title of the piece." He looked away, as if searching the limits of his memory, and recited, "Counterpoint on a Theme by Gottfried Heinrich Bach." He waited, impatient. "Do you have it?"

"Yes, master."

"1 like the organ better than the clavier. Tomorrow you'll make me a version for the lute. Do you hear, Kaspar?"

"Yes, master, for the lute." He swallowed.

"Did you like it?"

"No, master, not at all."

For the second time that day, the old man smiled.

"1 do. Put my name on it."

"You want to sign it?" Poor Kasper was shocked once again. "That?"

"Yes, that, Kaspar."

In a shaky hand, Kaspar wrote out the signature that his master rarely asked of him: Johannes Sebastian Bach fecit.

"Thank you, lad." The old man sighed, at the limit of his strength. "Now you have to take me right to bed. And the thing we've written… hide it for now." He sighed. "Can 1 trust you?"

"You know perfectly well that 1 would give my life for you."

The old man, pleased by the answer, let some time go by. Perhaps he was savoring the expression of loyalty; perhaps he was remembering Gottfried's theme and imagining it for strings.

"When 1 die, you will take it personally to my eldest son."

"Mr. Friedemann will tear it up."

"You will tell Wilhelm Friedemann," he intoned in a tired voice, interrupted by his effortful breathing, "that this theme of his brother Gottfried is the thing 1 love most at this moment, and that it is my wish that it be held back from the sale of my manuscripts and books."

"But how can you think that anyone would sell a manuscript…"

"You'll hear it spoken of," the master interrupted him, "but this one must not be sold."

"Why, master?"

"1 don't know." As if he could see, the old man looked dreamily towards the window. "1 really don't know."

"It's not music, master."

"It is music: it has come from a heart." He turned his blind face towards Kaspar's voice, putting an end to the discussion. "For now, hide it. Don't show it to my Magdalena; it would make her suffer."

He got to his feet with effort, and the boy ran to his side.

"1'm very tired. This is almost over… Do you think I'm mad, Kaspar?"

"Watch the step, master."

Kaspar helped his master, whom the effort had exhausted, to get into bed. It was early afternoon and a heavy summer shower was falling. The boy was thinking, Why aren't they back, why hasn't anybody come, please, please come, because the master had begun to call in a broken voice, Magdalena, where are you, where are my children, I'm dying, where is my music, what is this darkness… And in a hoarse, tuneless voice he sang, facing the wall, This is enough, Lord: when you wish, release me from my bonds. Jesus, come. Oh, world, farewell. 1 go to the celestial mansion. 1 go full of certainty and peace, leaving my sorrows behind. This is enough, Lord. And Kaspar wondered if he should leave him and go for help. But he could not move from his side because his master had grasped his hand and breathed in all the air in the world. He held Kaspar's hand even harder, as if it were connecting him to life. Now he didn't breathe out. Kaspar, horrified, began to cry, because his master had just died and he was alone in the house and didn't know what to do.

The summer rain was still beating against the windows of the room. All of a sudden, Kaspar freed himself from the hand that was holding his and stood up. He'd had a frightening thought: Mistress Magdalena, Mr. Friedemann, Mr. Altnikol… everyone would blame him for the master's death because he'd allowed him to work, against instructions, and because he'd allowed him to compose music that killed him. Filled with panic, he hurried to the organ room. With tears in his eyes he found all the papers he'd written that terrible afternoon and put them in a pile. He rubbed his forehead to erase any memory of that diabolical music, as if he were capable of forgetting any note he'd heard, left the room angrily clutching the scores and headed for the stove in the kitchen. Page by page, he threw them into the fire, to erase all trace of his disobedience, all proof of his crime, until with the last sheet the dream of a madman was consumed by the fire and went smoking up the stovepipe into the gray sky of Leipzig, as if it were a life.

t happened because little ltshak was overcome by a fit of coughing. He pressed his face against his mother's body, and desperate, she drew his head to her breast, almost smothering him. But the child coughed, three irrepressible times. Though they were muffled, to the family the coughs sounded like three dreadful cannon shots. And the soldiers who were about to abandon the search heard them too.

The crackle of indiscriminate shooting immediately filled the house and the sound of breaking glass told Miriam that they'd thrown her wedding china against the window. The grandfather began to whimper to himself and Dr. Lodzer clenched his fists impotently. It took them only a moment to find the slit that opened the wall panel hiding the narrow chamber that served as the Lodzer family's hideout. They stood immobile and terrified in chiaroscuro, as if in a Rembrandt painting, lit up by the powerful Wehrmacht flashlights carried by the Ukranian SS patrol. And only the doctor could understand the hysterical shouting of the German officer, but everyone knew what it meant. And the pushing to get them out of the hiding place while Grandfather Lodzer recited the ekahs and said, The greatest among the nations has become a widow who weeps ceaselessly at night; the ways of Zion are in mourning. And to silence him the officer knocked out his three remaining teeth with a casual blow of the butt of his Mauser. Outside, on Novolipki Street, it was already dark though it wasn't yet noon, because the fog, the fear, the screams of panic, the cries of rage and the smoke of the fires were hiding the scant winter light that Adonai, God of armies, deigned to send to the ghetto. And the little ones, holding on to their mother, were saying, Where are we going, Mother?

They made them climb into a covered truck. The Lodzer family looked for the last time at the house where they'd spent the last two terrible years, and the doctor suddenly remembered all the time before the disaster, running around in his father's jewelry workshop as a child, when it wasn't a crime to cough, and the hours and hours spent studying and the days and days spent in the doctor's office on Sienna Street, the patients one after another, the births of Itshak and Edith and the great love of Miriam, now before him thinking of her beloved, powerless and defeated. She was desperately holding onto the two children, afraid that a stray gust would carry them to their death, and she felt alone, bereft, in the cutting wind. They had only the clothes on their backs, they hadn't been allowed to take even an old coat or a suitcase because the officer was so irritated (we don't have time to play hide-and-seek). Doctor Lodzer looked out of the corner of his eye at the grandfather, who was stoically enduring the pain of his damaged mouth and blaspheming silently, which was unlike him, because Elohim had abandoned him even though he was a just man. Little ltshak questioned his father with his eyes and didn't dare to say, Father, why are they doing this to us, what have we done to them? He started to cry silently because they'd been discovered on account of his cough.